Monthly Archives: April 2010

ANNOUNCEMENTS: The next set of lineups are due a week from next Tuesday, May 4. The next set of games will run through 5/2/2010. Unless we experience technical disaster, minor leaguers should be available.

CLICK THE OWNERS LINK in order to access stats, standings, and league leaders. You might want to start perusing the comparison pages to get a sense for how the readouts work.

COMMENTARY: The Mariners and all the Chicago teams jumped out ahead of the real teams….Tampa and Seattle really got out of the gate fast…Ty Wiggington (an alumni of Rick Wynne’s old college) leads the league with 9 HR; in real life he has 11 hits but 5 HR…Scott Podsednik leads the league in batting average and has 9 steals, making him the prototypical leadoff man…The Giants lead ASFBL with 25 HR, the most power in the league…The Rays have the most SB with 19…The Pirates have a team ERA over 5, but the bullpen allowed none of 16 inherited runners to score, best in the league….The Met bullpen allowed half of inherited runners in…The Rays have the best actual team ERA (2.63) and can explain much of their success by the virtually identical fantasy performance (2.62)…In 8 of the 15 Met games one team scored 1 run or fewer, which is what happens when you can’t hit and have Santana and Pelfry throwing 40% of your starts

We’re ready to roll! Lineups are due by midnight; I’ll post the results tomorrow. Things to keep in mind:

1) Make sure you set your rotation; the error message probably says OK, but if you didn’t enter your own rotation I just threw guys in there. Remember that the auto function won’t work for the first week, so make sure you put your #1 guy as your opening-day starter and adjust the rest accordingly.

2) Be sure to specify a bullpen strategy and closer type; in the dry run some closers didn’t get used, and my leading theory at this point is that the closer type wasn’t set. I’ll add some code to put in a default, but you should enter your choice.

3) Do review your lineups; if I entered them I just made sure you had a starter at every position but made no effort to put them in a sensical order.

4) You can add or drop anyone from your roster this week without penalty. I’ve given all teams 20 free waivers, so use them for any demotions. For the next lineup I’ll set everyone to 2 free waivers, the number we all get at the start of the year.

Looks like everything took and the games seemed to run. In the aggregate, there don’t seem to be any mass anomalies and everything seems to be running well.

If you click on the owners link in the left-hand sidebar and click on the standings, you can peruse the results and take a look at the stats, leaders, and box scores.

The dry run results will stay up through Wednesday. On Thursday I’ll wipe them and post the updated stats. Lineups will be due Thursday night; once we shift to the regular schedule you’ll have 2 days after the post of the stats (post on Monday, lineups due Tuesday, results posted Monday). The shorter turnaround on the first lineup is because we’ve all had 3 weeks to work out trades and there are no roster moves that need making.

For the first lineup you can ignore any waiver warnings; after I download the stats I’ll wipe all the waivers and give everyone 2 free waivers to start the season. This will be reflected as of the posting of results on Friday. If you didn’t enter a dry run lineup I blazed through promotions, lineups, and pitching rotations, so you’ll probably want to make a substantial number of changes to your first lineups.

Thanks to everyone for helping out with the dry run; we go live on Thursday!

This is a refresher and includes some infomation about the “dry run.” I just got everything ready to go at around noon Pacific time; if you made changes before that, there’s a decent chance they got lost in all the uploading and downloading I did and I’m afraid you’ll need to re-enter them.

The dry run is simply designed to give everyone a test run. All results will be erased; none of this will count.

Start by logging in; click the “Owner links” on the left-hand tabs and then the transactions login page. You’ll automatically be taken to your team management dashboard.

Click the link that starts “promote and demote” — this is how you set your roster. From the inactive player boxes at the bottom, add the players to your roster one at a time by clicking on the “promote” buttons next to their names. Set the pitcher roles after they have been promoted, especially the starters. And do take a moment to read the instructions at the top of the page. Hopefully, this will be the last time you need to all year. Return to the dashboard.

Set the lineups. Click the link and follow directions.

Modify the rotation. You’ll probably need to do this manually; click the box next to the game on the left-hand box and the “insert” button next to the starter you want to appear in that game. Return to the dashboard.

When the dashboard shows that the lineups and rotations are OK, you’re all done.